{"id":198,"date":"2013-01-28T13:07:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T13:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/?p=198"},"modified":"2015-05-11T12:45:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T11:45:24","slug":"hs2-whats-in-it-for-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2013\/01\/28\/hs2-whats-in-it-for-kent\/","title":{"rendered":"HS2: What’s in it for Kent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"train-track\"<\/a>Plans for the next phase of the \u00a332bn HS2 high-speed rail network have been unveiled and it could be good news for Kent, says the School’s transport economics expert Professor Roger Vickerman.<\/p>\n

Commenting on today’s government announcement, Professor Vickerman said: \u2018The Government’s announcement of the route for the northern extension of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds could be good news for Kent.<\/p>\n

\u2018Whilst much of the focus is on the possible environmental effects of the route, a key element of the plan is that it includes a link from the new HS2 route to HS1. In principle this could allow high-speed services to operate from Ashford to the Midlands and North, boosting even further the integration of Kent into the UK economy.<\/p>\n

\u2018This may be unlikely for various reasons, as the main focus has been on linking cities such as Manchester and Birmingham with Paris and Brussels. But the economics of these through services is likely to be marginal; they could be used however to boost services from the Kent stations to the continent with regional Eurostar services calling at the Kent stations.<\/p>\n

\u2018At the same time experience of living with HS1 in Kent can allow a demonstration of how quickly new infrastructure can be absorbed without creating the devastation being predicted by some. The only depressing thing about today\u2019s announcement is that the first trains over the new lines will not run until 2026 to Birmingham and 2032 at the earliest to Manchester and Leeds.\u2019<\/p>\n

Roger Vickerman is Professor of\u00a0European Economics\u00a0and Dean of the University’s Brussels School of International Studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans for the next phase of the \u00a332bn HS2 high-speed rail network have been unveiled and it could be good news for Kent, says the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39722,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}